Yohan Cabaye said the lure of the Champions League was the main driver of his move from Newcastle to PSG. Photograph: Xavier Laine/Getty Images

Yohan Cabaye has come out in defence of his former manager Alan Pardew, suggesting that Newcastle United’s players should share the blame for the team’s predicament with their embattled coach.

Pardew’s position is on a knife edge after his side’s 1-0 defeat at Stoke City on Monday but the midfielder Cabaye, who left for Paris Saint-Germain in January after a two-and-a-half year spell at St James’ Park, has stuck up for the man who gave him his chance in English football.

“I keep looking at the club and at the results, and I’m a bit sad about the situation because the people there deserve much better,” he said. “The manager is in trouble now but he shouldn’t get all the complaints because it’s not only about him, so I am sad for him and want to wish him all the best.”

The departure of Cabaye, the team’s influential playmaker, has been cited as a major factor in Newcastle’s decline, with Pardew confessing at the time that his team would have to change style.

Pardew’s side have won only four of 21 Premier League games since Cabaye left on 29 January, losing 14 of them. But the player sees comparisons with an underwhelming 2012-13 season, his second at the club after moving from Lille, in which he believes the squad rallied round to steady the ship.

“When I was there and the second season wasn’t good, the fact was that we were the players on the pitch,” Cabaye said, speaking as part of BT Sport activities promoting its exclusive coverage of Ligue 1. “OK, the manager told us the way to play, but after that the players are on the pitch. We took the criticism two years ago because as players we knew that the job wasn’t good enough. Now I hope that it’s the same and that the players work harder to get the club higher up the league.”

Although Pardew has since lamented the effect Cabaye’s brief “strike” in August 2013 had on his team, there is no enmity on the Frenchman’s part and he speaks warmly of the pair’s relationship. “I like him because he gave me confidence to play, and to play as I did for two and a half years,” he said. “As manager he is really close to the players and talks a lot with them. He puts them in a good position to play well and we give him back our trust.”

Cabaye believes that Pardew was sympathetic to his desire to join PSG, although he admits that the two did not communicate when his transfer was finalised. “PSG is now one of the biggest teams in Europe, so I didn’t want to let it go and pass up on that chance,” he said. “I think the manager understood it and that was my principal reason [to leave].

“I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with him or even to call him, but I know that if he texted me, called me or wanted to meet me in Paris, I would do it with pleasure. I just want to give him back whatever he gave me. He’s a good manager and is going to stay that way in my mind.”

While Pardew fights to save his job at Swansea City, Cabaye will be preparing for Sunday’s match between the Ligue 1 champions PSG and last year’s runners-up, Monaco. He has not been an automatic selection in Laurent Blanc’s side, particularly in the Champions League where he has started in only one of his five appearances, coming off the bench in Tuesday night’s 3-2 win over Barcelona.

“Of course I want to play more, especially in the Champions League,” he says. “I’m at a big club now and there are so many players with fantastic quality. So I’ll just stay focused on my job and be ready when the manager calls me to come in to the starting 11.”

Zlatan Ibrahimovic may return tomorrow after missing the Barcelona game through injury, and Cabaye said that playing alongside the mercurial Swede, whose demands do not always go down well with team-mates, is helping his own game.

“He’s got a big, big character but above all he’s very hard on himself and always wants to play well,” he said. “When he does something wrong he’s mad at himself so, when you understand that, you agree that he can be mad at you when you don’t see the right ball or something like that. He’s a big competitor and shows us that he wants to be the best player – I can learn from him every day.”

PSG v Monaco is exclusively live on BT Sport 1 on Sunday 5 October, kick-off 8pm as one of multiple exclusively live Ligue 1 fixtures on BT Sport each week. Build up to Paris Saint-Germain v Monaco with the European Football Show from 7pm on BT Sport 1.‚Äù*